Question

How do I express multiple or options in a conditional statement in Ruby? I thought something like this would work but it doesn’t:

1 == (3 || 2 || 1)
(1 == (3 || 2 || 1))

I thought those would return true.

I want a way to say if any number of a group of things are true then return true. Do I have to spell it out the long way?

if (1 == 3 || 1 == 2 || 1 == 1)

In English I would say it

If 1 equals 3, 2, or 1, then return true.

Answer 1

Yes, that’s one way to do it. More Rubyesque would be:

if [3, 2, 1].include?(1)

The reason that 1 == (3 || 2 || 1) doesn’t work is because (3 || 2 || 1) is evaluated first. The || operator returns the first value if it’s truthy, and the second if the first is falsy.

Thus (3 || 2 || 1) is 3, so you’re comparing 1 == 3, which is obviously false.